Hey! Hello, China! Hello, Chinese buses! Glad to see you, Chinese guides!

And in this case, it's not bad, as you might have thought. Every bus had built-in air conditioning, and the guides spoke both Chinese and English (Chinese is such a funny language, you have to hear it, it's hard to describe in words). And all this for a ridiculous price. But let's start from the very beginning, or rather, from my return to the "city that never sleeps."

I bought 3 tickets online for a 3-day tour: "New York, 1000 Islands, Niagara Falls, Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York." They were running a promotion at the time: buy 2 tickets and get the 3rd one free (only on the condition that the 3rd tour participant stays in the same hotel room as the other 2). Again, with the help of the World Wide Web, I found 2 people willing to join me on this mini-trip. Their names were Kristina and Tyoma.

At 7 a.m., the buses pulled up to Chinatown, we threw our bags into the luggage compartment, and set off toward the unknown.